Wikoff’s relationship with Mary Lincoln appalled polite society. In October 1861, George Gibbs, bemoaning the “fatuity of Lincoln & Seward,” told a friend that “Mrs L. seems now to be at the head of the State. As the Chevalier Wikoff is an habitué of the White House you need not be surprised at anything.” The First Lady, Gibbs added, “is a byword among the officials here [in Washington] for ignorance, vulgarity and meanness.” Two months later, David Davis wrote home: “Rumors are plenty—that Mrs. Lincoln is acting badly.” It was said “that she has installed as Master of Ceremonies at the White House, the Chevalier Wikoff,” a “terrible libertine, & no woman ought to tolerate his presence.” Washington matrons were “in distress” at this news. In November 1861, a journalist reported that “Mrs. Lincoln is making herself both a fool and a nuisance. Chevalier Wikoff is her gallant, and I have within the week seen two notes signed by him in her name sending compliments and invitation. … He is a beautiful specimen to occupy such a position.” In disbelief, a leading Connecticut Republican, Joseph R. Hawley, asked: “What does Mrs. Lincoln mean by … having anything to do with that world-renowned whoremonger and swindler Chevalier Wikoff? Is [Mrs.] Lincoln an old saphead or is she a headstrong fool who thinks she can have a kitchen cabinet? It’s a national disgrace.” Echoing this sentiment, John Hay deemed Wikoff an “unclean bird,” a “vile creature,” a “marked and branded social Pariah, a monstrosity abhorred by men and women,” and declared it “an enduring disgrace to American society that it suffers such a thing to be at large.” Frederick Law Olmsted was scandalized when he observed the First Lady and Wikoff, whom he called an “insufferable beast,” at a White House band concert. General John E. Wool found it “certainly strange” that she would call on Wikoff at Willard’s Hotel, wait for him in the lobby for a long time, help him don his gloves, and then ride off with him in her carriage. “Some very extraordinary storeys are told of this Lady,” Wool wrote his wife.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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